Well, I was sceptical it would meet the goal. Bear in mind Double Fine asked for $400,000 and got $3 million - I thought David Braben was asking for too much, and it galled me that an established company was begging for money because they had (repeatedly) failed to find a traditional publisher who would back the game. Let's hope it makes the stretch goal for Mac/Linux users too.

It was looking pretty hairy for Frontier Developments' Elite: Dangerous Kickstarter up until the last week, but that $2 million target was always meant to be smashed.

Dangerous is the Elite sequel that many players have been pining over for around 15 years now, and as such, you would have been forgiven for believing that David Braben's Kickstarter-bound followup would breeze past its goal. As it turns out, the industry veteran himself shared a similar view -- at least to begin with.

"I started off confident, but in the middle I was a little nervous," he admits to us. "All Kickstarter campaigns that are eventually successful seem to have a similar shape, so I was hopeful there would be an upturn at the end."

"I think there can be a danger with Kickstarter that people set their minimum goals lower than they really need, because of the understandable 'all-or-nothing' nature of the funding, without considering the commitment it brings," he adds, "but half-way through I too had the odd doubt if this was the right thing to have done!"

Notably, anyone watching Twitter on the day that the Elite: Dangerous Kickstarter launched will have no doubt witnessed a wide range of reactions to it. Some we hugely pleased to see a new Elite sequel on the way, while others weren't so infatuated.

"Initially people were pretty positive, but a small number of nay-sayers seemed to bring a great deal of negativity," says Braben. "I think this was principally because it seemed quite a few campaigns started a week or so after ours - the ones from 22 Cans/Peter Molyneux and the one from Blitz/the Oliver Twins being the most obvious, and there was a perception being put forwards of 'bandwagon jumping.'"

"Ironically this in itself became a bandwagon, as this story was propagated around," he adds. He also notes that being forced to list the target in pounds rather than dollars didn't help his cause -- "It should be possible to specify round numbers in each currency. Also there are more restrictions on UK-based projects. I think it would be good to expose some flexibility to the creators here."

Braben notes that he doesn't really see a huge deal of different between the campaign run by Tim Schafer and Double Fine last year, and his own approach.

"I think one criticism was fair - that we went into our campaign with too little prepared material," he reasons. "We were going to have a video, but ended up doing an exclusive video with Rory Cellan Jones of the BBC so our video was delayed a little.

The team later added lots of extra material to the Kickstarter page, but Braben believes that some damage was already done -- "people took the relative lack of material for a lack of faith."

"It is strange but with Kickstarter there is a difficult balance between it being a way to start a project (and so you would have nothing) to requiring finished quality material in order to do the pitch (and so be almost finished)," he notes.

With this in mind, he says that the number one thing Frontier learned during the campaign is that you need to have tons of prepared content ready for viewer consumption -- however, this isn't the most important element.

"I think people often miss what I think is the most important element - to be open, honest, and reactive to fans' comments," he says. "Certainly this is what I look for when looking at other people’s Kickstarter campaigns."

"The biggest lesson I have learned is the level of engagement from the fans is vital. I have really enjoyed talking to the people on the comments pages, on Reddit, and privately. It can be hard work, but it is heart-warming, and as a rule people were very positive and supportive."

And now Frontier turns its attention to developing the new Elite, and somehow managing to fulfill the expectations of a generation that has been waiting patiently for some time.

"I have every expectation it will continue to be difficult!" Braben says. "People's expectations are pretty high, but people have seen what we have shown already, so I am confident they will enjoy what we make, and of course many will have input in this process too."

"One great thing about modern games though, is you can continue to improve them post-release, so even those who do not the particular feature they long for, there is a good chance we can add it with time."

Twitter: XtherealjaxonXArgue ye not with fanboys lest ye become a fanboy

Hi all, since its becoming more and more popular, I think it's about time we had a thread dedicated to Kickstarter projects

Omnidirectional treadmill Omni smashes Kickstarter target

It took just a few hours for omnidirectional treadmill Omni to hit – and indeed, surpass – its Kickstarter target last night.

Omni, created by Virtuix, combines with virtual reality headset Oculus Rift to offer players a truly immersive VR experience. It allows users to control their direction and speed of movement by walking on the spot.

Combined with the 360 degree motion-tracking headset, it offers the best approximation yet of fully immersive virtual world gameplay.

The company was targeting $150k to fund the initial shipment of the device but with 47 days to go it currently stands at $484,950 having attracted pledges from 1,260 backers.

The minimum pledge needed to secure an Omni unit is $249, with various tiers running all the way up to $10,000.

Precursor pulls plug on Shadow of the Eternals

“Since we announced this Kickstarter campaign we have seen more support from our community than we had ever hoped for.”

That’s the message from studio Precursor Games after raising just $128k of its $1.35m Kickstarter target for Eternal Darkness successor Shadow of the Eternals.

The studio has now pulled the plug on the project, though it has now promised to run ANOTHER crowdfunding effort, again on Kickstarter, to try and get the troubled project off the ground.

The statement is yet ANOTHER backtrack from the company having just last week said that the game would likely never be released were its crowd-funding efforts to fail.

“Along with this support has come a host of a new exciting opportunities that will make the game better than we envisioned,” a company statement read. “As a result, we have chosen to temporarily take down the Shadow of the Eternals crowdfunding campaigns on both Kickstarter and our own website on Thursday, June 6th.

“This doesn’t mean we are going away – far from it. We’ll be re-launching the Kickstarter in just a few short weeks with a reveal of these exciting new developments.

“As we’re closing the current Kickstarter campaign not a single dime from this campaign will be removed from supporters’ accounts and everyone from our website’s crowdfunding campaign will receive full refunds via PayPal. As we re-tool our campaign and continue development, the forums on our site will remain open and active and any interested fans can still join the ‘Order of the Unseen’ to see our progress and join in the fun of creating content for the game themselves.

“We want to thank everyone who has participated, volunteered, and spoken up to support us. You are our community and we value you more than you know. Stay tuned and we’ll be back soon.”

Twitter: XtherealjaxonXArgue ye not with fanboys lest ye become a fanboy

I’m Zak, artist for PSYBLOCKS.
We have recently launched our game on Kickstarter and I’m hoping you all might follow this link to check it out. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/160 ... /psyblocks
Been working on this game for quite a few months now, we are really proud of what we have so far, and really want to see it completed, in all its glory, in the hands of gamers like yourselves.
We are only 2 people and we are trying hard to circulate the news around.
If the gameplay interests you, and you wouldn’t mind playing this game, please donate towards its development or share however you can to people you know.

This thread is also to have a discussion with all about features of the game, or any other relevant questions/queries.

Epic Games has announced that Oculus Rift support will be integrated into Unreal Engine 4.

The next-gen engine will boast support for at least 13 middleware technology companies, with Oculus Rift, NVIDIA and Intel featured in the list.

The support is part of a new Integrated Partners Program. According to Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney, the program will help developers "maximize" their development time.

"We have taken the time to integrate UE4 with the best middleware technologies so our licensees can stay focused on making great games," Sweeney said.

Oculus Rift dev kits were distributed in March following a successful Kickstarter campaign. Since then a handful of independent ports of popular titles including Skyrim and Mirror's Edge have appeared.

Man! Unreal 4 and Oculus - awesome (sick bags at the ready )

Twitter: XtherealjaxonXArgue ye not with fanboys lest ye become a fanboy

Virtual reality startup Oculus has attracted Series A funding of $16m to back the headline-grabbing Oculus Rift.

The fund-raising endeavour was led by Spark Capital and Matrix Partners. Santo Politi and Antonio Rodriguez, execs at the respective firms, have now also joined the Oculus board of directors.

The company says the additional funds “will be used to accelerate the development of virtual reality hardware, software and services, ultimately creating a full virtual reality platform for consumers”.

"In our estimation, Oculus is one of the only companies in the space with something completely new and disruptive. They have the right team, capital and vision to take virtual reality beyond console gaming and into everyday computing."

Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe added: "What better way to mark our first anniversary than to announce our next phase of growth. There are still many challenging problems to solve, but with the support of these great investment partners, and our passionate community, we will continue to hire the brightest minds and stay laser focused on delivering the very best virtual reality platform possible."

Its the future.

Twitter: XtherealjaxonXArgue ye not with fanboys lest ye become a fanboy

Double Fine has run in to trouble with its crowdfunded title Broken Age, previously known as Double Fine Adventure, which has gone over budget and past its projected completion date.

The project launched on Kickstarter last year and raised over $3.3 million for an “old-school adventure game”.

The record-breaking success of the campaign spawned a crowdfunding craze that lasted most of last year, and still has many small and independent studios – including Double Fine – taking to Kickstarter again and again for fan-funding.

But some of these projects have started to run into trouble, and Broken Age is no exception.

In a letter to backers, Double Fine founder Tim Schafer revealed that if Broken Age were to continue as currently designed, it wouldn't be finished until July of next year.

“Even though we received much more money from our Kickstarter than we, or anybody anticipated, that didn’t stop me from getting excited and designing a game so big that it would need even more money,” admitted Schafer.

“I think I just have an idea in my head about how big an adventure game should be, so it’s hard for me to design one that’s much smaller than Grim Fandango or Full Throttle. There’s just a certain amount of scope needed to create a complex puzzle space and to develop a real story. At least with my brain, there is.”

Schafer told fans that rather than gutting the current game design and art, Broken Age will be split into two halves, the first of which will be released in January 2014.

Twitter: XtherealjaxonXArgue ye not with fanboys lest ye become a fanboy

"Last fall OC ReMix launched a Kickstarter project to produce a 5-disc album filled with 74 songs from 74 different artists dedicated to the soundtrack of Final Fantasy VI on the Super Nintendo. The initial goal of $30,000 was smashed quickly and the project eventually pulled in $153,633."

The goal of our culture now is not the emancipation of the individual from the group, but the permanent definition of the individual by the group.
We used to call this bigotry.
Now we call this being woke.